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Monday, 2 August 2010

Waiting room

Whenever people ask me what it's like to be a professional coach (tourbus) driver, I tell them it's great. And I mean it. I get to go places. So far I've been to see Rome, London, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Reims (in France's Champagne region) and Esbjerg in Denmark. Now I will be the first to say I've only seen the surface of those places (London and Ireland excluded) and would need a lot more visits to those countries/cities to really feel I know them inside out.

Now, apart from the great part of visiting foreign countries and cities, there's also a part that is not so great. The schooltrips to the same amusement park four days in a row. The staff parties. The rail replacement (I know the pay will have been worth it though). The school runs.

But the worst part by far must be the waiting. Waiting for the group to finally decide that they do want to go on that trip an hour after we were supposed to leave. Waiting for the traffic lights to turn to green. Waiting for a colleague to show up so you can finally, finally (yes, I wrote that twice, it's not a mistake) take over and go home!

Because that's what happened today. I couldn't reach him because his mobile phone was dead and I had arrived at a quarter past four this afternoon to take over. Out of the seventeen buses scheduled to arrive between six and seven pm? Take a wild guess!

If your guess was anything like last bus arriving at half past eight, you would be correct! And I wasn't happy...